“When your heart is touched, it’s not a decision”

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-77
Author(s):  
Linda Darwish

This is a qualitative study of 17 Iranian Muslim converts to Christianity residing in Canada. The study asks how the sample narrativizes the meaning of religious conversion in their lives. Analysis reveals a six-fold thematic pattern, the underlying premise of which is the relationship between volition, cognition, and sensory experience (or religious emotion). There is a consensus among respondents that human knowledge is always limited, whatever the field of inquiry. In consequence, religious knowledge based on cognition alone proves to be an insufficient guide to matters of ultimate truth. It follows that conversion is frequently experienced and represented less as a rational choice than as a spontaneously gifted event in which cognition and volition are absorbed by what Azari and Birnbacher have so aptly expressed as a “[knowing] that feels like something.”

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-217
Author(s):  
Karijn G. Nijhoff

This paper explores the relationship between education and labour market positioning in The Hague, a Dutch city with a unique labour market. One of the main minority groups, Turkish-Dutch, is the focus in this qualitative study on higher educated minorities and their labour market success. Interviews reveal that the obstacles the respondents face are linked to discrimination and network limitation. The respondents perceive “personal characteristics” as the most important tool to overcoming the obstacles. Education does not only increase their professional skills, but also widens their networks. The Dutch education system facilitates the chances of minorities in higher education through the “layering” of degrees. 


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 19-42
Author(s):  
Khalid Shibib

As a humanitarian worker who was professionally involved for decades in crisis- and war-shaken countries, the author strove to understand the political, socioeconomic, and cultural factors contributing to conflicts. This contextualization, with a focus on Arab countries, confirmed what other thinkers found: the majority of political, economic, social, cultural, religious, and finally humanitarian crises in the Arab world are man-made and can be attributed to both extrinsic and intrinsic factors. Central to the latter appears to be a shared cultural construct that can be termed “Arab reason.” This essay tries to present information on various aspects of the crisis; to understand why reform efforts come so late and why are they are more difficult for Arabs than for other Muslims. It continues by looking at the knowledge systems that govern Arab reason and their evolution, including the decisive role of the religious knowledge system. From there, it proposes some reform ideas including a renewed legal reasoning process with the goal of a future-oriented, knowledge-based, and inclusive Arab Islamic vision. A pragmatic way forward could be an additional unifying eighth legal school (madhhab/madhāhib) to counter sectarian conflicts and violence. This essay is built on a targeted literature search and is not a comprehensive review of the growing literature generated by distinguished thinkers on various aspects of Arab Islamic identity.


Author(s):  
Serghei Musaji ◽  
Julio De Castro

Despite the continuous interest in studying entrepreneurial teams, the relationship between team composition and, particularly, team diversity and performance remains fertile ground for active debate. Taking roots in the knowledge-based view and organizational learning literatures, this chapter argues that performance in entrepreneurial teams is contingent on (a) the overlap between team members’ knowledge/competences and the content of the performed tasks, (b) the duplication of the team members’ knowledge in the areas with that content, (c) the nature of tasks (exploration or exploitation), (d) the team’s flexibility to adapt to changes in the content and nature of those tasks, and (e) the rate of environmental change. Because an important source of ambiguity in the understanding of how team diversity and performance are linked ties to issues of how team diversity is conceptualized and operationalized, the chapter also proposes a new way of looking at diversity in future research.


Author(s):  
Clara Egger ◽  
Raul Magni-Berton

Abstract A recently published paper in this journal (Choi, 2021) establishes a statistical link between, on the one hand, Islamist terrorist campaigns – including terrorist attacks and online propaganda – and, on the other the growth of the Muslim population. The author explains this result by stating that successful campaigns lead some individuals to convert to Islam. In this commentary, we intend to reply to this article by focusing on the impact of terrorist attacks on religious conversion. We first show that Choi's results suffer from theoretical flaws – a failure to comprehensively unpack the link between violence and conversion – and methodological shortcomings – a focus on all terrorist groups over a period where Islamist attacks were rare. This leads us to replicate Choi's analysis by distinguishing Islamist and non-Islamist terror attacks on a more adequate timeframe. By doing so, we no longer find empirical support for the relationship between terror attacks and the growth of the Muslim population. However, our analyses suggest that such a hypothesis may hold but only in contexts where the level and intensity of political violence are high.


2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Maree Maher

OECD data suggest a significant gap between desired fertility rates and the total fertility rate achieved in developed industrial nations. In a qualitative study conducted in Australia in 2002 and 2003, people were asked how family policies influenced their decisions to have children. Participants did not clearly associate their fertility choices and prevailing policy settings. But their decision-making was grounded in commonplace accounts of incompatibility in balancing work and family. This article considers how individual choices may be shaped by such social and policy discourses and what implications this has for our understanding of the relationship between fertility choices and policy settings.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 100450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yilin Yang ◽  
Mengqiu Cao ◽  
Long Cheng ◽  
Keyu Zhai ◽  
Xu Zhao ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abbas Koolivand ◽  
Mahdi Salehi ◽  
Meysam Arabzadeh ◽  
Hassan Ghodrati

Purpose This paper aims to assess the relationship between a knowledge-based economy and fraudulent financial reporting. Design/methodology/approach The study is descriptive-correlation based on published information from enlisted firms on the Tehran Stock Exchange during 2013–2019 with a sample of 178 firms (1,246 observations). The method used for hypothesis testing is linear regression using the panel data. Findings The results show that a knowledge-based economy is associated negatively and significantly with financial reporting. Moreover, robust testing has also examined the hypotheses (including fixed effects, OLS and t + 1) that confirmed the study’s preliminary results. Originality/value As the study was carried out in the emergent financial markets, like Iran, to figure out the relationship between knowledge-based economy and financial reporting, it can provide helpful information for the practitioners in this field.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (121) ◽  
pp. 185-195
Author(s):  
Zatov Zatov

A comparative study of the mythological picture of the world, early forms of religion allows us to identify common features characteristic of the worldview and spiritual guidelines of mankind as a whole. These features can be traced in archaic ideas about the structure of the universe, in understanding their spiritual and bodily essence, the infinity of God and the eternity of the soul, the relationship and interdependence of life forms in the world. This allows us to assert the thesis of the unity of mankind in its spiritual origins, despite racial and ethnic diversity. In the process of a comparative analysis of mythology, early forms of religion, the concept of God, the pantheon and the function of the gods, similar moments and ethnological specifics of understanding the essence of the soul and reincarnation in totemistic beliefs, in cosmological and theogonistic concepts are revealed.The author also analyzes the role and significance of the cult of ancestors, traces the evolution of the idea of proto-monotism (the creative function of Tengri and Brahma, the intention of henotheistic faith) and its place in religious knowledge.


2002 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janice Hassebrock Laakso

About one-third of custodial mothers choose not to pursue a child support award even though it can be a significant source of income. A qualitative study was conducted with 43 mothers who have each had at least one child in a nonmarital relationship, to learn more about how mothers make the decision to file or not file for child support. The findings indicate that a key determinant in a mother's decision is the quality of her relationship with the father: a mother is less likely to file when the relationship is good and more likely to file when the relationship is poor or has ended. Other key determinants are family influence and availability of information about filing. Visitation was not found to influence these decisions. Unfortunately, mothers are often making their decisions without access to accurate and timely information. Social workers frequently are employed in settings that serve families faced with decisions about child support, and have numerous opportunities for intervention by providing both information and guidance about the decision.


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